ABSTRACT
Most people think of psycho-analysis, as Freud did, as a method of treatment for a complaint. The complaint was regarded as similar to a physical ailment which, when you know what it is, has to be treated in accordance with the rules of medicine. The parallel with medicine was, and still is, useful. But as psycho-analysis has grown so it has been seen to differ from physical medicine until the gap between them has passed from the obvious to the unbridgeable. For most purposes the similarity yields illuminating comparisons and models that facilitate discussion. But the more we see of psycho-analysis the more the models become inadequate to define, report, or apply psycho-analysis. Differentiation has meant that models which were illuminating have become opaque and often misleading even to psychoanalysts. Let us see why. We may start by discussing the obvious and simple reasons, though they will not remain either for long.
